NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, has published a 45-page discussion paper on how transforming healthcare to involve the public, i.e. the creation of people-powered public services, can save money and save lives.
The National Health Service (NHS) needs to save £15 billion to £20 billion over the next few years. This paper argues that these savings could be achieved through radical patient-centred service redesign and more effective approaches to public behaviour change. However, these approaches are difficult to develop within the existing health service.
NESTA’s experience of working with leading companies and developing projects in healthcare demonstrates that radical new ways of innovating that give genuine power to frontline staff, patients and the public are necessary to make these approaches widespread. This would unlock the savings we need and improve the nation’s health.